Clever little book that is truly like no other. One could go on and on but overall it was just very clever! Thansk to Netgalley and the publisher! But especially the author!

The Cemetery of Untold Stories is a marvelous work of fiction by Julia Alvarez, inspired by her life. Alma is a writer who publishes under the pseudonym of Sharazade. She teaches creative writing and lives in Vermont, which mirrors Alvarez's work and residence. In the magical realism portion, her untold stories have voices that certain people can hear, like Filomena, the caretaker of the cemetery set up for the untold stories in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. It's an interesting journey that Julia takes us on, rooted in truth but adjusted to fit the story she wants to tell.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories has a truly magical plot: A writer named Alma inherits a parcel of land in her home country of the Dominican Republic, and decides to relocate there with her abandoned manuscripts in tow. She creates a graveyard for her unfinished stories – a place where she can lay the lost plots and characters to rest. But her characters have different ideas, whispering their stories to the groundskeeper and eventually to each other – rewriting their own narratives and refusing to be silenced.

I simply adore books about stories, and The Cemetery of Untold Stories is a novel that engages overtly with the magic, serendipitous nature of storytelling. Through Alma’s characters’ stories, Julia Alvarez explores the fraught history of the DR, the joy of unexpected connection, female agency, familial and romantic love, and how we can never truly know or understand the landscape of someone else’s inner life. It’s magical realism, it’s historical fiction, it’s a deeply felt character study.

That said, though, I didn’t quite connect with this book the way I expected to. I typically enjoy a stream-of-consciousness narrative, but found this one to be a bit messy and unorganized. I never forged an emotional connection with any of the characters. I was initially engaged with their stories, but after a while the constant changes in perspective became tedious, and some of the stories became too melodramatic. There’s also a child murder in this book, FYI; it’s not graphic, but it does feel completely unnecessary.

Ultimately, I loved the concept of The Cemetery of Untold Stories much more than its execution.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publishing Team for this Advanced Digital Readers Copy, I thoroughly enjoyed this book!

This book is almost impossible to review. The story line is so unique....or it is to me....and the characters so emotional, the review has to be very short or very long. The thought of burying all the unfinished stories in your life, much less those you are trying to write, in a true graveyard is so brilliant, it defies definition. I loved this book and I'm going to love and recommend it over and over and over.

I really tried to get into this novel but the writing style was difficult for me to follow. This would appeal to someone who has a more whimsical view of writing and story creation than I do.

gorgeous tale about history, family, and our regrets for never completing certain things. a worth it read that prompts you to more.

A writer, now late in her years, inherits property in her homeland, the Dominican Republic. Inheriting the least valuable property (near a dump, no less), no one is sure what she plans to build there. The locals are concerned about a cemetery, but they are baffled when they find out it is a cemetery for books.

A cemetery of untold stories where the only people who can enter must tell a story. An old woman keeps whispering stories, and she is hired by the writer Alma to keep up the place and the grounds. Alma buries her stories, the ones she can't make work. We see the old woman's story, which tells a bit of the story of the country.

THE CEMETERY OF UNTOLD STORIES by Julia Alvarez was a delight. An end-of-career artist can't figure out how else to put the untold stories she's tried to tell to bed so she makes a cemetery for them. But that doesn't stop the stories from being told anyway. A little magic realism and so much love and joy.

This is my first Julia Alvarez book, and the author’s expert weaving of multiple stories, themes, and timelines was beyond admirable. The way she pulled it all together at the end was nothing short of miraculous. I adored that part of the book.

And yet, I felt disconnected to the characters, despite loving the concept of buried, incomplete manuscripts in a cemetery (writers/authors will love this). The themes around the importance of stories were exceptionally done. Some of those nuggets of wisdom:

That’s why in certain tribes they say when an older person dies, a library is gone.

The problem, she explains, is that many people don’t think they have a story. So, they tell you some canned telenovela plot or some imported Disney nonsense they believe you want to hear.

And if you could hear other people’s stories all the time, what then? Would you understand them better? Would you forgive them?

You listen. There are stories in the silence, too.

I’m a journalist, so much of this spoke to me professionally and personally: I always look for the human element in any story I write – science, higher ed, business – which is to say I seek the personal stories of the person I am interviewing. “My life is boring,” people say, or “you don’t want to hear that,” and yet, by the end of an interview, it is this element of personal storytelling that usually leads the piece.

Of note: for readers who have difficulty with foreign language, be warned that this book has a great deal of Spanish in it (a language I wish I studied, instead of Latin!). The same is to be said of lack of quotation marks. They don’t exist.

Despite my quibbles, I would definitely read another Alvarez book. I always appreciate learning new history – and I knew little of the Dominican Republic, and nothing of Bienvenida, first wife of dictator Rafael Trujillo.

I was very intrigued by the synopsis of this book, and Julia Alvarez is an author whose earlier books I read many years ago. I was so excited to hear that she had this new title coming out. This didn't quite measure up to my experience of reading those past books, but it was still an interesting story.

Alma is a writer who inherits land in the Dominican Republic and decides to create a place to bury her unpublished manuscripts with markers to honor the untold stories and put her writing life to rest. In doing so, Alvarez connects history of the Dominican Republic through storytelling of characters both alive and deceased. The stories rise up and tell their secrets to those who will listen and as they do, fictionalized narratives of historical people and places are woven beautifully together.

While I had the arc, I ended up listening to the audiobook and think this may be more powerful in print. Granted my headspace right now has been impacted by stress and I had to restart the novel at least 5 times because I hadn’t paid enough attention, but with many characters and little variation among voices I found it super challenging to keep track of all of the connections. I think it would have been much better done had it been narrated by a cast, so it will be interesting to hear what physical book readers think.

Julia Alvarez's *The Cemetery of Untold Stories* is a poignant and evocative exploration of memory and loss, set against a backdrop of rich, atmospheric storytelling. Alvarez’s lyrical prose and deeply human characters bring a hauntingly beautiful narrative to life. The novel’s intricate blend of history and emotion makes it a compelling and memorable read.

This is the kind of book that ticked almost every box to be a favorite of mine but somehow still didn’t entirely hit the spot.

The Cemetery of Untold Stories follows Alma, an extremely successful author who feels haunted by the many stories she has started but never finished. So when she inherits some land in the Dominican Republic she makes the strange decision to use it as a “cemetery” for all those old manuscripts and unfinished drafts. But once they are buried the stories have their own thoughts about if they should remain untold. Bienvenida, the second wife of the dictator Rafael Trujillo, and Manuel, a Dominican doctor who was forced to flee to the United States, are the two stories from the graveyard that are shared in this book.

The first thing I need to say is that this was written BEAUTIFULLY. I loved the prose. It completely sucked me in at first. The mystery of Bienvenida’s past was introduced early in the book and I was quickly interested. I liked Filomena, as the reader is meant to, and I appreciate that Julia Alvarez was “brave” (I’m not sure if that’s the right word…) enough to make Filomena’s sister do the terrible thing that she did. She didn’t hold back. I hate when I can feel authors holding back.

But I had a hard time motivating myself to read this book. I first picked it up 5 months ago. I finished it yesterday. I do think one of the reasons was the constant time and perspective jumping. Usually I don’t mind that at all, but in this particular book… it just didn’t work for me. I wish I’d gotten to spend more time sitting with each character and in each era. I also didn’t care about Manuel. I knew why I was *supposed* to care about him, but that wasn’t enough to force me to. I still didn’t think he was as interesting as Bienvenida. I’m also disappointed because I went into this thinking I was going to hear at least a little about ALL of Alma’s incomplete work, not just these two.

Alma was the least interesting prominent character, which is fine because Filomena, the cemetery’s groundskeeper, ends up being a more “important” character and her personality and twisted past are more thoroughly fleshed out. I’m just telling you that in case you choose to read this and also find that at the beginning Alma’s story feels rushed and a little incomplete. It’s because Filomena’s coming up, and she’s the one who will receive the cemetery’s stories and have her past return to her in a big way.

If this sounds good to you I do think you should try it. Maybe just try a sample somewhere and see if the style of storytelling works for you.

I love Julia Alvarez. This one felt like such a natural extension of her as a writer. I love the way this story is told in Spanglish (thank goodness I know enough Spanish to understand *most* of the asides in Spanish in the book!). This book was really a story-within-a-story -- the stories of those that the writer in the story wanted to finally put to bed, the characters (all mostly based on real-life people from the writer's life and history) get a chance to tell their own stories to those who have been voiceless for so long.

One of my favorite books of the year. Alvarez’ writing is a warm hug. I am so grateful to read the stories of older women as an example of aging gracefully.

A thoughtful, spooky magical realism tale. Great for lovers of Sylvia Morena-Garcia and Mariana Enriquez

A difficult book to review. The layering of narratives and intertwined voices together with a mix of statues telling their stories piecemeal and the author Alma suppressing stories made the story hard to follow and kept me as a reader at an emotional distance.

I could not get into this story. After getting through nearly half, I felt like little was happening and there wasn’t enough to keep me interested. I rarely DNF a book, but this one will not be finished. Perhaps at a later time I will try again.

This book took me a little while to get into, but I ultimately fell in love with the dreamy writing style. Filomena was my favorite character, but I enjoyed the blend of historical figures and magical realism across the board.